Boats, Boats Boats!

D-Day from the tail of a B-17.

Originally published in The Dispatch magazine, Volume 29, Number 1, Spring, 2004
edition. If you are interested in subscribing to The Dispatch please write
to The Commemorative Air Force, ATTN: Dispatch Editor, PO Box 62000, Midland, TX
79711-2000 or call (432) 563-1000. Reproduced with permission.

The Allied invasion of Europe, D-Day, 6 June, 1944 was the largest
combined-forces operations of the Second World War. The numbers alone are
staggering, involving hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen
involved, nearly 6,000 ships and landing craft, and over 14,000 sorties flown by
Allied bombers, fighters and reconnaissance planes on that day alone. It could
not fail, or the Allies might lose the war.

The planners of D-Day knew that the only hope for a successful invasion at
Normandy was to deceive Hitler into believing that a second, larger landing
would take place elsewhere on the French coast. An elaborate deception plan was
devised which included everything from phantom armies in England to “ghost”
invasion fleets which appeared on the German coastal radars well to the north of
the actual invasion beaches and then suddenly vanished at dawn. All of this was
wrapped in a heavy veil of secrecy to protect the men who would have to go
ashore at Normandy and those who would support them from the air and sea. Many
of the secret plans and operations of D-Day remained classified for 20 to 30
years, and some even longer. One would think that now, nearly 60 years after
D-Day, everything that happened that day and every secret must be know and
published, but the following story illustrates that some puzzles still exist.

Col Bruce Wallace joined the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) in 1990, when CAF Headquarters was in the
process of moving to our present home in Midland, where he lives. Even before
joining and having the honorary rank of CAF Colonel, Wallace was Colonel Wallace
to most of his friends, having retired from the Army infantry as a colonel
in 1979 after a distinguished career. However, on D-Day, Wallace was a young staff
sergeant in the USAAF, serving as a B-17 tail-gunner in the 325th Bomb Squadron,
92nd Bomb Group of the Eight Air Force based at Podington Air Base, England.

While not an official oral history, Wallace was kind enough to share his
memories of D-Day, when his group flew two missions in support of the invasion,
and parts of his story do question what is known and what may still be hidden in
“the fog of war” about that day.

To Brest with Rocket Bombs

The first mission the 92nd BG flew on D-Day was against the German U-boat pens
at Brest, France, about 200 miles west and south of the Normandy beaches. In the
briefing for this mission, the crews were told they would attack the thick
reinforced-concrete U-boat pen roofs with a new and secret type of bomb – a
rocket bomb which could penetrate up to 20 feet into the pens before exploding.
Because of the rocket bombs’ size, only two could be carried by each B-17 and
had to be mounted one under each wing. Wallace remembers seeing these long,
slender bombs as the crews manned their planes. He points out that it was still
pitch dark but that the distinctive size and shape of the bombs were unlike any
other bomb he saw before or after this mission.

Once airborne, the planes flew southwest over the English Channel and circled
around to attack Brest from the southeast, striking the target shortly after
sunup. From his tail-gunner’s position, Wallace saw that the rocket bombs had
blown huge craters in and collapsed one or more of the U-boat pen roofs.
Anti-aircraft fire was heavy after they left the target but all of the planes
made it safely back to England. When asked if he saw anything of the invasion on
the return flight, all Wallace said was “Boat, boats, boats!”

What is puzzling about this account is that Brest is not listed as a target on
D-Day for the Eight Air Force heavy bombers in published histories, and while
there was an American rocket bomb very similar to the weapon Wallace
described, called the “Disney” bomb, it was not used operationally until Feb.
10,
1945, based again on published histories. Interestingly, however, it was then
first dropped by B-17s of the same 92nd BG. When this was pointed out, Wallace was
certain that his group had carried rocket bombs on June 6, 1944, and that he
never saw the weapon again. When shown a photo of a “Disney” bomb, he said that
it was very similar to the bombs they carried that morning.

Could Wallace have somehow confused the dates on which his group used the
rocket bombs? What makes that unlikely is that his B-17 was shot down on a raid
over Berlin on Feb. 3, 1945, a week before the documented first use of the
weapon, and he was captured by the Germans but then escaped. Upon his return to
England, his escape and events related to it prevented his further combat over
Europe. He is certain that his group attacked Brest on their first mission of
D-Day.

The “Disney” rocket bomb was developed by Capt. Edward Terrell of the Royal Navy
and was designed to attack exactly the type of target described by Wallace.
It weighed 4,500 pounds and had a rocket motor in its tail which ignited at
5,000 feet to accelerate the bomb to 2400 feet per second on impact, giving it
deep penetration before exploding. Because it was 14 feet long, no British
bomber could carry the weapon, and the bombs were mounted under the wings of
B-17s, just as Wallace described. An attack on the U-boat pens at Brest on D-Day
would certainly make sense, as the German submarines could have played havoc
with the thousands of ships and smaller craft supporting the invasion, both that
day and for the weeks ahead.

Could the 92nd BG have used an early, secret version of the rocket bomb on
D-Day? As noted at the beginning of this article, the Allies certainly developed
and used a variety of special weapons and tactics to support the invasion, both
in the air and on the beaches themselves. Was this mission a casualty of secrecy
and the passage of time, or is there another explanation for Wallace’s
memories. Perhaps the answer lies with one of our readers. If you can shed any
light on this seeming puzzle, please write us.

Over Normandy in the Afternoon

When the men of the 92nd had debriefed from the mission to Brest and finished
lunch, they found their B-17s being readied for another mission, this time in
direct support of the Allied forces ashore at Normandy. Their target was German
infantry and tanks close behind the invasion beaches. Wallace remembers the
briefer saying they would be attacking a Panzer division that was once part of
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s famed Africa Korps in North Africa. On D-Day,
Rommel commanded Army Group B and was overall commander of the German forces
defending Normandy. The 21st Panzer division was located just south of Caen,
behind the eastern landing beaches and had originally been the 5th Light
Division, part of the Africa Korps. This unit may have been the target mentioned
in the briefing.

Taking off about 1:30 p.m., the bombers flew lower than on longer missions, below
12,000 feet, as the crews did not have to wear their oxygen masks. When asked
about their route, Wallace said they crossed the coast of Normandy over Omaha
beach at Pointe Du Hoc, where the 2nd Ranger Battalion had scaled the 100-foot
cliffs to silence German artillery positions earlier that day. Soon after
crossing inland and somewhere a few miles behind the beaches, they attacked
their target with a type of bomb that was once again, unfamiliar to him.

In the briefing, the crews had been told these bombs would detonate before
striking the ground, spewing out fragments that would be deadly to any troops or
equipment not protected by armor. Wallace said these were called “butterfly”
bombs and that they were British weapons. “Butterfly bomb” was the British
nickname for the German SD 2 fragmentation bomb which was dropped in clusters
and may have been a generic term for anti-personnel cluster bombs. As on the
first mission that day, Wallace was able to observe the effect of the bombs
as they struck, saying they shredded trees and kicked up clouds of dust and dirt
around each detonation and seemed quite effective. Two B-17s were lost on the
mission but the rest returned safely after a relatively short flight back to
England.

While surviving D-Day, Wallace, his planes and fellow crewmembers did not
escape damage and injury on other missions, as seen in the photo of his B-17
after being hit by flak in both the nose and tail. As mentioned above, on his
last mission, he was shot down over Germany in early February 1945 and eight of
the ten men in his crew were lost. Lest we forget.

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